The US telecoms giant is expected to merge Yahoo with AOL, to create a digital group capable of taking on the likes of Google and Facebook. Verizon bought AOL - another faded internet star -in a $4.4bn deal last year, which gave it ownership of the Huffington Post, Techcrunch, Engadget and other news sites.

Shortly afterwards, Verizon announced it would start combining data about its mobile network subscribers - which is tied to their handsets - with the tracking information already gathered by AOL's sites. By doing so it said it could deliver more "personalised" ads.

One asset that Verizon will be getting as part of its $4.83 billion acquisition of Yahoo’s core assets, which it did not specifically mention in its big announcement today, is Yahoo’s (in)famous brand — main name, purple color and exclamation mark all included. This, in turn, means that when the deal is completed (expected Q1 2017) the remaining Yahoo will rename itself and will become a separate, registered publicly traded investment business, the company said today.

It’s not clear if Verizon and AOL (which owns us, TechCrunch) intend to keep the Yahoo! branding that they are acquiring. Generally, they’ve held on to brands when ingesting them, and like it or hate it, Yahoo’s brand is huge. Indeed, later today, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong noted, “Don’t touch the brands.”